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Charley Says… That’s one more Quango gone!

By Tom Papworth
June 24th, 2011 at 12:41 pm | 2 Comments | Posted in Government, Nannying, Privatisation

News reaches us today that the Government is to close the Central Office of Information, the government marketing agency that has been making propaganda films since 1946.

As a Government Trading Fund, the CoI didn’t receive direct taxpayer funds; it made its money by selling services to other government departments and to local and regional authorities. However, this created an extra level of bureaucracy that was unnecessary and costly.

Frankly, I very much doubt that we need government to tell us not to play with teapots, that you can survive a 50 megatonne nuclear strike by turning off the gas and electricity or sitting under a bridge, and that you can lose your bird if you don’t know how to swim (bird, n. derogatory term used by Government for a women, usually portrayed as a ditzy girl who flits between partners depending on their ability to swim). An easy £525 million could be saved by cutting all government information films.

But if we really must make them, perphas we could turn to the private sector to make them more intesting.

The Government says... No more Charley!

 

 

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ASH…We Really Must Do This More Often

By Angela Harbutt
June 24th, 2011 at 12:46 am | 12 Comments | Posted in Personal Freedom

A couple of days ago I wrote a small wee post on ASH . I thought it might be of  interest to those who read our blog and care about personal freedom and the nannying (and now “nudge”) state in which we live.  I was somewhat taken aback by the response (positive and negative). When Big ASH piles into the comments you know you have touched a nerve.

Anybody who thought that the debate on smoking was over, must surely think again.

Some of the comments were so astonishing that I was going to write a whole new post about them. Then I saw that Dick Puddlecote had done something already… “We Really Must Do This More Often” . To be honest, it wasn’t quite the post I had in mind, but it is really very funny and thought you might enjoy. And I will leave my  musings for another day. My thanks to Mr Puddlecote.

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The People’s Bank is in the red…

By Andy Mayer
June 23rd, 2011 at 10:37 pm | Comments Off on The People’s Bank is in the red… | Posted in Banks, Liberal Democrats

I confess, like most commentators on this matter, I’m less than thrilled by the idea of the People’s Banks – giving everyone a small stake in the  nationalised entities RBS and Lloyds.

Whilst I can see the populist appeal, I’m not clear why it’s better to get our money back through an administrative equivalent of the national ID card database. Rather than just selling them off and reducing the debt. In fact it might guarantee we don’t get the money back.

The government for example may be wise to sell the banks at a loss (to avoid worse losses later), or break them up in order to maximise value. This scheme, holding shares in trust, would prevent the former, and make the latter more difficult.  

It’s also not clear to me why a body with 46 million shareholders (or more) would be any better run (fiscally) than the nearest equivalent, the Treasury. With a national referendum required for every AGM, the temptation would be for bank governance to be overtaken by activism on a raft of single issues unrelated to the business of running a good bank. Positions on the Board would become attractive targets for publicity seekers. Dull  but talented executives actually good at making money, if current public attitudes in polls are typical, would be regularly sacked on the grounds of ‘being greedy bankers’.

A problem particularly likely during the period the shares remain in trust. The shareholders, at that point have few incentives to be responsible. They own a share of nothing.

This is not a problem generally true in with share ownership. If you’re an investor with something to lose you care passionately about whether or not your investment has just voted cut rates to the point of making a loss in the name of fairness, loan money to high risk small businesses with a good lobby, or commit 0.7% of revenue to CSR.

Banks are financially successful because they are not run like democratic governments. Banks mostly target and invest in probable success. Governments, for reasons of equity, fairness or other political values, tend to do quite a lot of the exact opposite.

Turning a bank then into a proxy for government is not necessarily going to lead to a windfall for anyone. And if that doesn’t happen, the long-term political dividend will be negative.

Time for Nick Clegg to change the conversation

By Simon Goldie
June 22nd, 2011 at 7:29 pm | 4 Comments | Posted in Uncategorized

All communication professionals know that if you don’t like the conversation you change it. Put another way, do not fight on your critics’s territory. Take the battle where you can win.

All third parties struggle to be heard while in opposition.  The Liberal Democrats were not the exception to the rule. However good the people employed by Cowley Street were they faced an uphill struggle.

In government the party now gets a lot of media attention. While much of this is negative it gives communicators an opportunity. With a thought out and consistent communication strategy they may be able to change the conversation about the party.

To do this they need clear policies that tell a story about what the party is about and why it is in government.

But given the view the public now has of the party, that won’t be enough.

They need to find something that changes the perception of the party fundamentally. A headline that makes the reader’s eyebrows lift up as they they say to themselves, ‘I didn’t think that about the Lib Dems’. And of course it has to be a positive eyebrow raising moment.

Good communication alone cannot do it but strong policies without consistent public relations won’t either.

If the party fails do both, it is hard to say how it will come back from the low poll rating it currently has.

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ASH abuse of public money must end

By Angela Harbutt
June 22nd, 2011 at 12:28 pm | 157 Comments | Posted in Personal Freedom

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) is a campaigning health charity set up in 1971 by the Royal College of Physicians to work towards eliminating the harm caused by tobacco.  This could have been a force for good –  afterall there is nothing intrisically wrong with wishing to reduce the harm caused by tobacco.  It rather depends how you go about it – and that is so often  determined by who is footing the bills.

ASH receives huge amounts of money from the taxpayer  and sadly, like so many publicly funded bodies with too much money and too little scrutiny it has NOT gone about its task well. ASH has now become a fat, over-staffed, political, and single-minded organisation hell bent on eradicating smoking from the face of the earth, by whatever means necessary.  Where it could have worked with the industry to find solutions to the issues, it has set itself up against the manufacturers, the retailers and the consumers. And much of its so-called advice has been at best ineffecitve , and all too often counter-productive , with huge financial and social unintended consequences.

The future of ASH’s government funding must, now,  surely be in doubt.  Here we have an  organisation funded by government, actively lobbying government – often behind closed doors and with alarming success. I say “alarming” becuase it is. Government spending money to lobby itself makes ordinary folks blood boil at the best of times – indeed David Cameron said he would put a stop to it –  but this extraordinary abuse of public money surely can’t continue in the current economic climate.

I don’t say abolish ASH – we live in a free country. But government funding must cease. I came

 Read this letter from Kieran McDonnell, president of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, to David Cameron :

21 June 2011

Dear Prime Minister,

Formal complaint regarding breach of the Ministerial Code

I write to you in my capacity as President of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN), which represents 16,500 newsagent members across the UK, with a complaint regarding the conduct of your Public Health Minister Anne Milton with reference public statements made and circulated on 15th June when Ms Milton attended the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking & Health’s 40th anniversary for Action on Smoking & Health (ASH).

At the meeting, Ms Milton credited the Vice Chair of the group (and former Chair of the Health Select Committee) Kevin Barron MP for his help “behind the scenes” when addressing smoking legislation. In addition the Minister also accepted an award and presented an award to the Director of ASH.

This statement and public acceptance and deliverance of awards to an organisation that has been lobbying her department, MPs and other government departments (and indeed is granted government funding on the basis that it not be used for lobbying purposes) has called into question the manner in which recent tobacco display ban legislation has been made; and the ability of the Minister to be considered unbiased on the issue.

I attach a copy of the event report from an independent parliamentary reporting service and would ask that you formally conduct an investigation into the conduct of your minister in the light of her public admission that she had worked with an officer of an ASH funded parliamentary lobby group on recent legislation “behind the scenes”. Moreover, this inappropriate conduct necessitates a review of the legitimacy of the legislation itself.

We have long suspected that ‘behind the scenes’ dealings have been going on in the formation of this legislation in the manner in which it has been pushed through without running the legislation past the Reducing Regulation Committee; without identifying a ‘one out’ for the legislation; and indeed without fulfilling the BRE Guidance to undertake a Small Business Impact Assessment.

In light of these recent statements, I regrettably now see proof of these suspicions which is deeply offensive to our members who have campaigned so hard to see the government fulfil its pre-election commitments to bring the debate back to the House of Commons for a free vote and which the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats publically opposed in opposition.

I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Yours sincerely,

Kieran McDonnell
President, National Federation of Retail Newsagents

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